


there is nothing wrong

by KIBITZER



Category: RWBY
Genre: Drabble, Gen, kibitzer's weird niche continues, robot pretends to be less sentient than it is: the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7183964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KIBITZER/pseuds/KIBITZER
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had created a robot and taught it something fatal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is nothing wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Exercise. Pre-rwby.

There was a deep darkness enveloping her on all sides _(Her?_ Her _sides?)_ , a strong impenetrable nothingness that cocooned her ( _her?_ ). It would be soothing, maybe, but it was more crushing, an endless fatal void—full of potential, yet empty, empty, empty—

_All systems operational. There is nothing wrong. I am calm._

The first spark of light was a single chip. Hungrily _(hungry?)_ , needy _(?)_ , she latched on, sucking it dry of information. It came as images, with sound, with movement, video and audio. She didn’t understand it all. But she knew she wanted more. _(Wanting?)_

She felt, deep in her _(felt?)_ a stir, a string, coming to life. Programming. Lines of code chugged through, as nerve lines to her brain, doing everything automated, doing everything as told. Stream. Streaming. She played back the information, dense capsules of it shooting back to the chip, formatted and reformatted.

Faintly, she could hear _(with her own ears?)_ a murmur: “She’s doing the same thing.”

_She. The same thing._

_Friend, there is nothing wrong._

A current shot through her, like a pump of electricity, an extra surge of Dust-based energy to boost her capacity. The chip came out. Darkness. Another was put in. New light. Video files. Formatted, reformatted, put back on in more efficient file types.

“It’s all she was programmed to do.” A second murmur. Murmurer. A second speaker.

“She’s meant to be smarter. She’s meant to have learned.”

Darkness. New light. Text files. A still image of a man. Strings of code, separate from her own train of thought, parsed the information. Reinterpret. Cleanup. More efficient formats. Honed.

“She moved past this stage weeks ago. We were just about to proceed further with the project. Her intelligence should have—”

Ah. Darkness. No light.

“Penny. Open your eyes.”

A direct order.

Penny opened her eyes. With a whir, her optics focused to the light, pulling the foreground into focus.

The man from the picture was staring back, staring through her lenses, through her head. ( _Hers_.)

Her fingers (yes, hers,) were cold, and she forced them to remain as they were, hanging with faux-casual limpness at her sides. Her back was cushioned, as always, as though her chassis required comfort. She looked straight ahead, and her unblinking gaze was met.

“What’s wrong?”

She had read, once, in one of the text files, that humans often experienced a “dry” mouth. Though speakers and speech generating software, that was not possible for her, but she thought now that she knew what it was like. One of her speakers crackled briefly before the speech generator caught up.

“Nothing is wrong.” She vocalized, but her mouth was shut, hiding her grit teeth. “All systems operational.”

“Open your mouth.” She did. A flashlight shone in, examining her for defects. “Turn your head, side to side.”

It was easy to let her artificial parts do the work. As programmed, she eagerly followed orders, her consciousness slipping back into distant disinterest. Her. Hers. Her own.

Penny blinked on command, flashlight shining directly into her optics. The shutters whirred, lenses refocusing. There was nothing new. There was nothing wrong.

They had created a robot and taught it something fatal. They created a computer and missed the point where it gained sentience. They made an artificial intelligence, let it quietly become a person, and after that, it learned to lie.

“Penny. Report all systems.”

Automatically, as programmed, she recounted every operation in her body and its status.

There is nothing wrong.

There is nothing wrong.

There is nothing wrong.

_I am afraid, my friend, of the future._

_I do not want to be more than this. I do not want to proceed._

All systems are operational. There is nothing wrong. Perhaps, my good friend, it is time to stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Later, when the fault was discovered, they gave her an alert system to keep her lies in check.


End file.
